Linda Richardson

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I believe the best sales people are givers. Their clients’ success is their success. I have seen this a thousand times in my role as a consultant, writer, sales leader, and founder and builder of Richardson. I am privileged to work with sales forces worldwide. I learn form my clients and bring expertise, insights, and ideas to help them achieve their goals.

Early in my career I drove the movement to Consultative Selling to help salespeople adapt to changes in client needs and engage in need based dialogues. Consultative Selling became mainstream and served sales forces well for several decades. The unprecedented velocity of change in client needs, markets, and technology, specifically the internet, over the past few years has changed the face of selling and disrupted many of the tried and true sales methodologies.

My new book, Changing the Sales Conversation, McGraw-Hill -December 2013, focuses on the five conversation changers I have identified that are needed to succeed with highly informed clients in the new sales landscape. We have circled back to salespeople as teachers, not touting the superiority of their product capabilities, but bringing insights, ideas, and delivering results to their clients.. This is my 10th book and feel privileged to add chapters to the on-going book of sales.

For years, decades theorists have debated whether selling is an art or a science. Now there is an answer: Selling was primarily an art, but now it truly is also a science as well. The art is in the innate talent some are born with and the skills they can develop; the science is in the sales process, metrics, sales enablement tools, and research now available to sales teams with a click.

I am committed to helping sales leaders and salespeople build their expertise in content, strategy, and skill to create value for their clients, their organizations, and themselves.

I was born in Philadelphia and inherited my love of learning from my father and my drive for excellence from my mother. I was graduated from Temple University with a Masters degree in Educational Psychology and began my career as an English teacher. I moved on to become the director of the Living School in New York, where I learned the power of listening and questioning from the master, Albert Ellis, the founder of cognitive-behavior therapy. I also worked as a management consultant at the Hay Group and head of training and development at the now merged, JP Morgan Chase. I founded Richardson in 1978, the same year my husband Paul and I were married and moved from New York to my home town of Philadelphia. I have always seen myself at heart as a teacher. I believe that great selling is great teaching—collaborative, relevant, and results driven..

Awards:
Stevie Award for Lifetime Achievement in Sales Excellence – 2006
Training Industry Inc. among the “Top 20 Most Influential Sales Professionals.” – 2007 I Top Sales Awards as Sales and Marketing Thought Leader – 2012
Best Soft Skills and Product of the Year – 2010
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Representative List of Books:
Perfect Selling, a 2013 New York Times best-seller, which was included among the top 10 sales books of all time in SalesSource, Inc.com
Sales Coaching—Making the Great Leap from Sales Manager to Sales Coach, which provides sales leaders with a coaching methodology that not only changes behavior to increase performance but also helps sales people learn how to self coach and take responsibility for their own development; and I recorded the popular audio book series on sales and coaching topics.
Other books: Consultative Negotiations, Stop Telling,Start Selling, Sales Presentations
I write poetry, one endeavor that remains unpublished—but that strengthens my spirit, giving me inspiration to write and teach in the sales field, my professional home.

Affiliations:
United States Small Business Administration President’s Council
Philadelphia Mayor’s Art Council
Director of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia Art Alliance., and the American Poetry Review.